Healthful Sleep on Ultra-Violet Ray Bed

YOU grow healthy while you slumber and arise in the morning fresh and full of vitamines, if you sleep away the night in a special bed which has recently been devised by scientists.

What does the job of keeping the body of the sleeper fit is a battery of ultra-violet lights which bathe the flesh, as illustrated in the artist’s drawing above. An opaque screen covers the bed, thus shutting out the view and providing the occupants with the utmost privacy.

With cities growing constantly larger and sunlight becoming more and more scarce, these ultra-violet beds may be called upon to furnish all health rays in the future.

Flood Lights on Huge Aluminum Fins Make Fantastic Tower Ornament

A MODERN skyscraper in Rochester, N. Y., surmounted by an unique illuminated decoration which spreads an aluminum sheen upwards like some huge, fantastic flower is the latest achievement of electrical engineers.

The lighting system was designed to convert a water tower into an artistic and distinctive carillon tower topped by four gleaming fins of aluminum, curving outward from their bases at the four corners of the structure. The body of the tower is buttressed at the four corners and has aluminum grill work which forms a delicate dark tracery when illuminated from within.

The whole tower rises from the tank wall parapet like a modern symbol.

Igloos for Leathernecks

THE Eskimo’s igloo melts in the brief arctic summer. But the new Marine Corps igloo, or geodesic dome, is a year-round job that has been called the first basic improvement in mobile military shelters in 2,600 years. The Gyrenes have them in four sizes with diameters of 36, 42, 55 and 117 feet, plus two larger domes which are plane hangars. A year of trial use has shown that the domes can replace all existing shelters used by Fleet Marine Aviation; moving a single Wing to an advanced base overseas equipped with domes would save Uncle Sam $15,000,000 over the present system for housing men and equipment.

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New Devices Lighten Work of Housewives

Science has invaded the home, much to the housewife’s benefit. Here are seven new inventions that greatly reduce the labor of household tasks, leaving more time for leisure.

This compact container holds a pint of auto polish in top, polish cloths in bottom.

The steam radiator has now gone electric. Heater element, incased by radiator, is connected to wall outlet and warms up room in few minutes.

A very useful article for the modern kitchen is now available in the form of scales that tell the busy housewife the number of cups full of butter, flour, sugar, milk or water there are in a pound. It is only necessary to place a quantity of butter on the scales and weigh it. The result in pounds or fractions of a pound can be read in cups or half cups on the scale, which is provided with a knob, permitting it to be rotated. As each ingredient is weighed, the dial is adjusted so as to start at zero.

The “Nifty Sifter,” which prevents lumping of ingredients in mixing dishes. Pressure on handle opens and shuts squeezers.

The capacity of clothes closets is greatly increased with new garment hanger shown above. It is made from attractively finished steel tubing and provided with points that grip into the molding so that no screws or nails are required for installation. The hanger rests on the top of the coat hook rail, and the tube ends hold moth balls or crystals. Insert shows close-up of one end.

Top photo shows the new “Moto-Iron” which handles all types of ironing from flat work to the most exacting hand work, greatly reducing time and effort required of the housewife. Operation is entirely automatic. The ironing pad is vibrated by a small electric motor which pats out the wrinkles in the fabric, leaving a new fluffy finish, even on most delicate cloth. Below—Coffee is measured automatically and unerringly with this container. Tilt it once and it measures coffee for one cup, twice for two cups, etc.

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A Dome Grows in Brooklyn

The Dodgers’ home games may soon be played under this huge plastic bubble.

By Frank Tinsley

Mechanix Illustrated takes pride in being the first to show what the Brooklyn Dodgers’ new baseball park may look like—if the 20th century’s most daring architect gets his plan accepted. Buckminster Fuller has already earned the gratitude of the armed forces and the taxpaying public with his plastic igloos that can be helicopter-toted from air base to air base to serve as hangars, barracks, warehouses, administration buildings.

Fuller’s ball park plan is at present simply a proposal to employ his geodesic dome on a truly grand scale. The dome would be 300 feet high and 750 feet in diameter. How many fans it would hold has not yet been figured, but a smaller dome design submitted by architect Theodore Kleinsasser would seat 55,000—some 23,000 more than Ebbetts Field, the Brooks’ hallowed but decaying home park. Kleinsasser’s design is more detailed than Fuller’s and includes such novelties as a small sightseeing tramway over the top of the dome.

The dome design makes feasible the demand for a ball park big enough to hold the enormous Dodger following. It would also be an all-weather, year-round sports palace capable of pulling in big money as a showplace for every kind of sporting event and exposition. The New York State legislature has created a $30,000,000 authority empowered to create such a center and the dome design helped convince the lawmakers that it could be made to pay its own way. Mere Dodger sentiment could not have done that.

Mi’s drawing of the dome as it might look on completion includes details that originated in the MI office—details that in our opinion argue strongly in favor of adopting the basic Fuller design. The numerous entrances, corridors, escalators and other facilities are MI notions. At the top of the dome a small extension houses the air venting arrangements and the shadowless lighting fixtures that will light the field only, leaving the stands in comparative darkness. A huge underground car park under the stands and field leaves only a small central area for heating and air conditioning plants.

Four automobile entrances open off intersecting streets and are provided with three-lane ramps to the level below. Circular roads surround the main parking sections with radial access drives to the individual rows of car stalls. These are separated by sidewalks leading to the promenade above. This “concourse runs completely around the building at street level, with escalator bridges over the automobile entries leading to the grandstands above. The inner wall of the promenade is lined with shops, restaurants and other facilities whose rentals would help defray the building’s maintenance costs. A 24-hour parking service, operating independently of scheduled sporting events, provides another steady source of income.

Using the authorized 500-acre plot to the best advantage, Mi’s arena building is set in the center of a four square block area. This placement permits generous loading and unloading space for buses and taxi-cabs without interfering with the flow of through traffic around the sides of the square. Numerous safety islands and cross-walks lead to extra wide sidewalk areas were ticket lines form. Subway and train connections emerge inside the building’s promenade. (The site of the dome will adjoin the Long Island Railroad’s Brooklyn Terminal.) The whole project is laid out to handle the maximum number of people safely and to facilitate the flow of vehicular traffic peaks that sport centers are bound to generate.

The Dodger Dome would certainly become an object of pride in Brooklyn. It might even rival the borough’s ball team in public esteem. In any case, no club could be more deserving of such a fabulous park than that Fabulous Flock.

Restaurant Entrance Like Bow of Ship Attracts Business

IF a first prize were awarded for unique entrances, it would probably go to the proprietor of the Bernstein’s sea food restaurant in San Francisco. The entrance to the restaurant, shown in the photo at the right, leaves passers-by in little doubt as to the particular kind of food served there. It must, they reason, come from the sea, and on going in to investigate, they find their guess correct.

The entrance is built in the form of the bow of the ship “Nina,” on which, as every schoolboy knows, Columbus sailed on his great voyage of discovery. The model is complete, even to figurehead portholes.

Extra Hours of Freedom When the NEW MAYTAG comes to the Farm

TIRED muscles and frayed nerves are no longer a penalty of washday when the NEW Maytag comes. Mother is happier and sweeter… a better mother, a better wife… and many precious hours are saved each week for her profit and enjoyment.

Washing the clothes is no longer the hardest work of the farm house after the New Maytag comes. Washday changes to a pleasant hour or two. Clothes are cleaned without harmful hand-rubbing or harsh bleaching agents. They are washed by water action alone in the new Maytag one-piece, cast-aluminum tub.

Gasoline or Electric Power The Maytag is the original self-powered washer for farm homes without electricity. The Maytag Gasoline Multi-Motor is the finest, simplest washer engine built, and because of the demand more of them are built than any other single cylinder gasoline engine. Any farm home anywhere can enjoy Maytag helpfulness.

A Week’s Washing Free Write or phone the nearest dealer for a trial home washing with the NEW Maytag. If it doesn’t sell itself, don’t keep it. Divided payments you’ll never miss.

The Maytag Company
Newton, Iowa « Founded 1893
The Maytag Co., Ltd., Winnipeg

Maytag
Aluminum Washer

Novel Portland, Ore., Fire Station Looks Like a Residence
ONE of the most attractive fire stations in the country —so attractive, in fact, that it is indistinguishable from the beautiful homes of the neighborhood —is located in an exclusive residential district in Portland, Oregon. The residents of the neighborhood, threatened with increased insurance rates, and not wanting the charm of the district marred by the presence of an unsightly fire station, got together with the fire chief and an architect, and this fire station, shown in the accompanying photos, was the solution of the problem.

The fire truck is housed in a garage that forms a part of the building, which has the door and driveway so arranged that the truck can make as quick a get-away as in a regular station. When the garage door is closed the station, being built according to the restricted building code, looks no different from an ordinary home, except for the scroll bearing the words: “Engine 18.”

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NEW PRODUCTS AND INVENTIONS

Hume workshop hobbyists who own drill presses will find the new auxiliary work table shown at right extremely useful. The top is made of heavy gauge steel permanently bonded to a plywood base. Fits any type drill press. Comes complete with anchor studs, threaded bushings, irregular shaping pin and special pivoting fence with wing nut clamp. Provides a large, flat working surface for all operations.

The new type slip-stream deflectors above are said to keep the car’s windshield clear of all foreign substances. Fastened in front of the windshield, they turn the airstream and dirt aside.

A two-faced clock for desks, tables and between twin beds is the latest thing.

The garbage and waste disposal problem can now be solved by every home owner with the aid of the gadget pictured at right. This unit can be installed in any type of sink and will pulverize waste matter before flushing it down the drain.

Although the gas shortage is apparently over, the price of gasoline remains high, and motorists will want to drive as economically as possible this winter. Those contemplating a new car will be interested in the new light sedan just placed on the market, and illustrated at left. Consuming two-thirds less gasoline than the average small car, it delivers up to 50 miles per gallon of gas. The body of the car is all steel, with a steel “turret top.” It has ample leg-room, and rides very comfortably. The model stretched out alongside gives an idea of the car’s size.

Service stations may soon take on an additional duty with the introduction of a newly patented flying automobile. The novel vehicle is primarily intended for land travel and has the appearance of a conventional car, but it is adapted to function as an airplane with a minimum of additional equipment which can be attached by a service station attendant. So far as possible the standard power and control elements of the automobile are adapted for use with the vehicle in flight. The flight surfaces are designed to be added as a unit, so that the owner of the motor car may drive up to a flight service center, attach the flying unit to his car, take off and fly to another landing field where the flying unit may be detached and used on another automobile. One important application of the invention is said to be in military operations for transporting troops by air and by ground. This would increase the mobility of mechanized units.

Bathing beauties have a new accessory to add charm with the introduction of a novel type of bathing cap. Instead of the old flat and smooth type of cap used heretofore, a woman may now wear a cap to which is attached a wig in the form of a well dressed head of hair. The wig is of molded rubber and is not affected by water. An inner head holding portion serves to maintain the cap on the head. The inner part and the outer part form a closed space which can be inflated with air to fill out the shape of the wig.

A double function barber’s apron serves not only to catch falling hair, but also to protect the clothes of the customer while being given a shampoo. The apron is in the form of a circular doughnut shaped ring and is made of oil silk to render it water-proof. Being washable, it may be kept clean and sanitary.

A new bird-shaped exerciser is claimed to be valuable for strengthening the muscles of the arms, legs, chest and back. The device includes a series of feathering wing sections attached to arm-holding units. When the wings are swung upwardly the sections are open; while the feathers close with the downward motion to give a maximum of lift. The wing motion gives a sense of buoyance and tends to develop a personal sense of poise and balance according to the inventor. This function is stated to be of value in the training of aviators.

Persons who must use a telephone and use both hands at the same time may find a new telephone support of interest. The support is shaped to hold the telephone on the shoulder by pressure from the side of the head. The holder is made of sponge rubber, soft rubber, or felt. A roughened shoulder holding part assists in preventing slipping.

-Morton Leese.

Patents Identified Automobile ……………………………………….No. 2,241,577
Bathing Cap ……………………………………..No. 2,242,420
Apron ………………………………………………..No. 2,243,505
Exerciser …………………………………………..No. 2,244,444 Support………………………………………………No. 2,243,554

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Slap-Happy Homes

YOU don’t need a house to have a home!

This is a fact which many ingenious Americans have discovered in the past few years of housing shortages, and they’ve come up with some of the weirdest substitutes for the conventional love nest. It seems as though just about anything can be used for a place to hang up your hat when the situation is really rough. If you’re having house trouble, don’t be discouraged. Maybe these pictures will suggest a solution to you. And if your unusual home costs little and keeps you warm and dry, it might not be so slap-happy after all.

Mr. and Mrs. Lee Andre have a silo home near Palatine. Ohio. It once stored cattle fodder, now provides over 750 square feet of living area.

In Alexandria, Egypt, a landowner found his property too small so he built this house with two rooms upstairs and a regulation door, staircase.

Sons of R. T. Troxler of Elon College, North Carolina, returned from service, found 3,000 bottles, built this three-room summer house.

Pillboxes made of steel and cement are homes to these people in Milan. Italy. They’re sturdy, built for an atomic age, say their residents.

When a Cleveland. Ohio, winery thought prohibition was here to stay 25 years ago they sold these 6.000 gallon casks, now tourist homes.

When a transit line in Santa Monica. California, discarded an old bus it didn’t dream Miss Thelma Burnette would convert it into an efficient house.

R. Guy Davis of Macon, Georgia, bought an old coach from the Central of Georgia Railroad and made it into a home with all conveniences. When he wants to move he flags a passing train, asks for a tow.

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Inventions to Lighten Your Household Chores

When this electric cooker is placed face downward over a plate of meat, radiant heat cooks it through in ten minutes. In this way, meals can be prepared at the table.

Silk stockings and other fragile clothing not meant for the regular wash go into a separate compartment in this metal hamper. Soiled clothes are all put in at the top but only the heavy articles come out at the bottom.

Drip coffee, a cup at a time, can be made with this device which fits any standard sized cup.

This automatic toaster not only turns off the heat as soon as bread is toasted, but it also shoots the slice out onto a convenient plate. It can be readily adjusted to give light, medium, or well browned toast according to user’s preference.

Now which bottle contains the fresh milk? You will have no trouble answering that question if one of these tags is slipped around the neck of the bottle as soon as it arrives. There’s a label for each day in the week; an aluminum disk holds them when not in use.

Just put your mop in this dust cleaner, close the lid, twirl the mop a few times, and the dust is all gone. To empty the container, turn it upside down so the dust can collect in the cover. It’s then easy to take that off and empty it into the ash barrel.

A whole three-course dinner can be cooked at once in twenty minutes in this utensil. Pressure speeds up the process and only one gas burner need be used.

This unobtrusive device, which fastens to wall or table, has two stones against which a knife is sharpened.

Ordinarily this combination piece looks like a stool but when rods, which disappear through holes in the top, are drawn out it becomes a clothes rack, saving you steps on ironing day.

This meat chopper gives you what you want— coarse, medium, fine, or extra fine. It can be fastened to even a narrow table ledge. One turn of the wrist opens it wide, making it easy to clean.

Ice cubes can’t stick in this flexible tray, which is made of rubber instead of metal. Just spring back the sides and the ice is released without prodding.

The toothed ridge on this dustpan is credited with taking lint out of the broom and gathering up the last trace of dust that ordinarily clings to the floor. A handle for the toe gives the sweeper a chance to hold the pan firmly in place without stooping.

At right, a spoon that is more than a spoon. It has on the bowl rough projections that make it a grater. Also there is a forklike tine on one side that proves useful in lifting meats or in freeing food that sticks to bottom of frying pan.

First Beamless Steel Building

MADE entirely of “dished” plates of steel only 3/16 of an inch thick, this building was put up without any beams or other ordinary type of support. It is called “egg-shell type” construction. Measuring 108 feet in diameter and 28 feet high, the building is fireproof and soundproof and insulated throughout. It was built in Chicago.

BED FOR THE ATOM AGE

CAN’T sleep? Worried about the atom bomb? Where would you rather have it find you than in the Acousticot, a super-bed dreamed up by Colonel Elliott White Springs of the Springs Cotton Mills.

It’s soundproof, air conditioned and even has a bundling board for passengers so disposed. Light from outside is kept out by curtains sprayed with your favorite perfume. You can have spruce and sour mash to remind you of your home in the mountains, mint and smoked ham if you’re from Dixie or fresh fish and decayed aristocracy if you yearn for a tidewater town.

Until full production is realized, Colonel Springs is using the Acousticot to display Springmaid sheets in department stores. But he’ll let you have one now for $3,500.

On the shelf over the headboard are a slot machine, movie projector, air conditioner and pulsator for the mattress. On the headboard are installed an electric razor, turn-and-bank indicator. relative humidity hygrometer, oil pressure gauge, naval clock, compass, manifold pressure gauge, electric toothbrush, speed control, artificial horizon, altimeter, and humidistat. An automatic fire extinguisher is mounted over each berth, and the footboard holds a television set, radio and bookshelf.

Toenail view of the remotely controlled radio and TV sets in the bed’s footboard.

Bundling board in center can be raised or lowered by an overhead electric motor.

She’s Glad She Saved It

THIS strange vacuum cleaner is 40 years old, and Mrs. Carl Gifford, of Duanesburg, N. Y., still uses it in her daily housework. With war shortages making new vacuum cleaners scarce, Mrs. Gifford is glad she has it—only it pumps harder than a broom!

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Holiday Lighting Magic

Here are some original suggestions for attractive home Christmas displays.

by Earle Gage

THIS holiday season, as never before, homes and communities throughout the land will burst forth into magical greeting, as home craftsmen fabricate and illuminate new and brilliant displays. The festive spirit of the season and the gay atmosphere of gala events will live in sparkling, colorful lights.

Holiday lighting presents unlimited opportunities for the home craftsman to exercise his imagination and ingenuity. Standard wired materials and lamps lend themselves to many combinations to give new designs and arrangements of displays, both inside and outside homes.

Many useful materials, such as composition board, metal foils, metal sheets, transluscent fabrics, plastic sheets and shapes, natural and artificial materials, plexiglas, color mediums and floodlights may be used to create modest or elaborate displays.

One of the easiest and most effective greetings is the glowing cutout of “Merry Christmas” or “Yuletide Greetings,” cut from wallboard, the openings covered with translucent fabric which is illuminated from behind by a row of 25-watt lamps mounted on wooden or metal light trough painted white on the inside.

The style of letters used, or the words spelled, may be varied to meet the taste of the craftsman, while the length and height of the cutout may be made to fill any desired space, distance from the street determining the size of letters to insure clearness.

It is easy to make a cutout scene of a Chirstmas picture, which may be silhouetted against a light-colored background, the house serving as the background, making the cutout of wallboard, painting the back of the cutout white. The three camels of the Wise Men crossing the desert makes an ideal scene, the effectiveness of which is attractive, because it is both simple and beautiful.

A novel use of the cutout is to make a tree-shaped cutout of wallboard of desired proportions. Where the doorway is light colored, or there is a light-toned surface to provide a background for projected shadow effects, a small floodlight of 200-watts, using a clear lamp bulb, may be set back of the cutout of the tree and the shadow cast on the doorway or surface. You may make the shadow fit the desired space by simply adjusting the distance between the cutout and the floodlight.

Multiple silhouette displays are readily adaptible to indoor and outdoor use. The multiplane Christmas tree is an example. One idea is to use three of these on your lawn, build in three planes, lighted in red, blue and green, located at advantageous points to set off the remainder of the display. Or you can use a multiplane tree built in three planes, placed behind a front window. An ingenious method of showing a candle-light effect is to cut slits in the wallboard in the shape of candles. The light from concealed lamps will shine through, giving the impression that luminous candles are mounted on the tree.

A multiplane star, built in three planes, can be placed before a front window of the second floor of the house. The size of the star may be varied to meet the need, using either 25- or 40-watt lamps of any color between the second and third planes.

Two-plane trees make excellent indoor decorations for the fireplace mantel. Each three contains three low-wattage lamps concealed between the planes. The trees may be of any desired height to fit the scheme of architecture or decorative plan. These trees are also effective when used in windows, lighted by stronger wattage lamps.

Luminous candles, with multiplane flames make attractive and appropriate decorations for the doorway. The candles are made of wooden frames covered with celloglass. The candles may be made in half or full cylinders, with a light socket at the top and bottom for lamps and a small reflector made of sheet tin. The flame-shaped lamp candle droppings at the top complete the candle, and a cover of cellophane gives a shiny, frosty appearance. These candles may be made of any size . required to light indoor or outdoor backgrounds.

Corners of rooms may be dark, serving as excellent spots to place large luminous candles. These may be combined with garlands of evergreen draped around the room at the ceiling, or . for interesting lighted decorations. Colored lamps of not more than 25 watts may be used to light decorations on the Christmas tree.

You will find it easy to make shields to cover sidewall lamps, or to hang on brackets, using cardboard and a pot of paste. These may be designed to suit the taste.

Creating a snow scene in the living room is a unique way of decoration. This is done by use of strong white cords which are stretched near the ceiling from the four corners to a point in the center of the room, or diagonally from corner to corner. To make the”storm” dense, place intermediate strings. Suspend from the cords at six-inch intervals, “snow flakes” made of small cotton puffs. The strings of the puffs, suspended from the cords, are of different lengths and as close together as possible. When these puffs are lighted by use of concealed lights, the general effect is that of falling snow.

Spotlights may be made of old coffee cans, with shiny surfaces and regular natural colored lamps. These are placed above the line of vision. The “snow” is most effective if lighted from the corners of the room with a different color from each corner. Flashes, as used on the tree, help bring out a weird effect.

Using this storm scene as a background, the dining table may be decorated with candles, or small Christmas trees lighted with the new candle type series lamps, or with various Christmas scenes which are made of crepe paper, artificial snow and lights.

Now we are ready to decorate the Christmas tree, which should be well proportioned, and if one side is better than the other, put that side out and the poor side toward the corner. The base of the tree should be draped with green cloth or tissue paper and the larger gifts piled close to it. If the tree is set in a dish of water, it will keep green longer.

The branches may receive a frosted effect by touching them with liquid glue and sprinkling diamond dust on. Cotton, fluffed and sprinkled with dust may be used to make drifts of snow on some of the branches, while cotton-flakes may be suspended from the twigs. Cranberries and popcorn kernels may be fastened to the ends of twigs by use of invisible hairpins.

A tree decorated entirely with silver makes a pretty scene. Silver tinsel balls, draped of tinsel, ropes and a silver star at the top is the only trim needed This makes a breath-taking scene, with its branches drenched with tinsel snow gleaming under the light of a powerful concealed bulb.

A beautiful tree is one on which nothing but silver-blue tinsel ornaments are used. Peeping out of the branches are bright red miniature electric bulbs, sparsely used with sufficient light only to cause the tinsel decorations to glitter. Too much light would spoil the effect.

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NEW for CHRISTMAS

FOR THE HOME

PLASTIC SHADES of Vinylite adhere directly to glass without adhesive, can be peeled oil easily. Transeal, North Ave., Plainfield, N. J.

REFRIGARRANGERS are light, durable easy-to-clean containers of Bakelite styrene for leftover foods. Valley Forge Creations. Malvern. Pa.

PANCAKE TURNER-GREASER carries a replaceable absorbent pad to grease the pan. Without pad, holes drain grease. Paul Laux. Shavertown. Pa.

STORM WINDOWS of plastic can be used on homes, farmbuildings. withstand all weather. Easy to install. Central States Bag Co., St. Louis, Mo.

AUTOMATIC PERCOLATOR perks your coffee, keeps it hot. Made of aluminum, it has measure markings up to eight cups. Buckeye Aluminum, Wooster, O.

KNIFE RACK has sharpening slot in center, holds six knives by concealed jaws which can’t damage edges. New England Carbide Co., Cambridge, Mass.

FOR THE CAR

NYLON CAR COVER in forest green weighs only 5-1/2 pounds, is mildewproof. withstands all weather. Edge is elastic. American Agency. Broadway. N. Y.

AUTOMATIC LIGHT DIMMER for Oldsmobile is called Autronic Eye. mounts behind windshield as shown and lowers lights when a car approaches.

WINDSHIELD PROTECTOR of polyethylene plastic . protects parked car against sleet and snow. Central States Bag and Paper Co.. St. Louis. Mo’.

SQUEEZE BOTTLE-FILTER converts ordinary water into chemically pure, soft water for batteries, irons. Crystal Research Labs.. Hartford. Conn.

CAR CHAIR has adjustable head and arm rests, folds for carrying in small zipper case. Weight is 6-1/2 pounds. Kelley Chair. Louisville, Ky.

INSUL-8-TOR blanket cements to car hood, muffles noises, protects paint. Ricar Corp.. 180th St. N. Y. C.

FOR THE KIDDIES

MARIONETTES with Vinylite heads that (eel like human skin can be washed with damp cloth, easily manipulated by children. National Mask and Puppet Corp.. Brooklyn. N. Y.

JET ZOOM for rocket-travelling small fry is made of plastic, shoots pine-foot paper spiral with repeating action. Spirals are replaceable when worn. Tigrett Enterprises. Chicago. Ill.

PLAY TENT of Vinylite has inflatable base, stands 5 feet high, weighs 4 pounds, folds into small package. Bilnor Corp., Maspeth, L. I.

MAGNETIC ROADWAY enables child to steer tiny car through tunnels, past houses. German Inventions-Novelties. POB 384. Grand Central. N. Y. C.

BACKFIRING FORD, antique model, has caps inserted in bottom which explode when trigger is pulled, can be used as pull-toy. Replica of Model T. Precision Specialties, Los Angeles. Cal.

BLOW ORGAN of Bakelite operates on lung power, produces notes that sound like the real thing. It has 14 keys, weighs about 8 ounces. Magnus Harmonica Corp., Newark, N. I.

FOR THE SPORTSMAN

AUTO-LIFT HOOD on Evinrude’s new 15-hp Super Fastwin Hits for easy engine servicing when two clasps are opened. Evinrude, Milwaukee. Wis.

WARMUFF for outdoorsmen straps around your waist to keep hands warm. Supplied with heating unit Pacific Products. 10th Ave.. Portland. Ore.

NYLON SPOOL for Neo-Caster reel weighs one-third ounce, eliminates spool inertia and backlash. Kilian Tackle Co.. Baldwinsville, N. Y.

KAMP-PACK waterproof kit contains 17 items, three complete meals for four people. Only water is added. Bernard Food Industries. Chicago. Ill.

FLOODLIGHT LANTERN burns gasoline, has detachable handle reflector. Coleman. Wichita. Kan.

TUNABLE DUCK CALL named Mutone gives different tones by simple adjustment. No moisture effects. Rene-Craft Products. Wilmette. 111.

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MAKING HOME TASKS a Pleasure

Below and Right, a Dust-Proof Ash Receiver for Furnaces and Home Heating Plants; This Metal Container Prevents Dust and Dirt from Escaping and Settling over the Basement; Note How the Door Is Opened by a Foot Pedal, Thus Leaving Both Hands Free to Wield the Shovel.

Combination Cupboard and Dining-Room Table Which Can Be Converted from One to the Other without Moving the Dishes; Simple Locking Devices Hold It Rigid in Either Position.

Above, Jar and Bottle-Top Opener Attached to Underside of Shelf; Top Is Wedged between Knurled Stud and Side of Groove.

Coil Cord for the Electric Iron Which Stretches to Nine Feet; It Can also Be Used to Advantage on the Electric Toaster, Percolator or Room Heater; the Cord Is Always Out of the Way.

Above, Compact Bathroom Scale No Larger Than a Book and Weighing only Five Pounds; Right, Mixing Fork with Prongs Like Knife Blades for Chopping Fruits and Vegetables, Cutting Noodles and General Kitchen Use; Cutting Edges Are Along the Bottoms of the Prongs.

Left, Steel Combs Clean the Bristles of This Carpet Sweeper and the Brush Cleans the Combs When Direction Is Reversed; Right, Ice Box with Hopper-Type Ice Chamber and an Air-Circulation System Which Allows User to Control Temperature by Varying Quantity of Air Flowing around a Fixed Area of Exposed Ice.

Above, Electrical Appliance Cord on an Automatic Reel; When Not in Use, It Is Disconnected, Given a Gentle Pull and Rolls Up and Disappears in the Wall.

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They Got Rich on Ribs

These lads knew from nothing about running a rib joint—but man, that barbecue sauce!

By Eda Johnstone

NEVER heard of Kelbos? Guess you haven’t been in L.A. lately. It’s one of the biggest success stories out there since Mr. Goldwyn quit the shoestring business.

Kelbo’s Hawaiian Barbecue opened with a bang six years ago. Beginning as a small roadside stand, it has now branched out as Kelbo’s Kar-B-Q and Kelbo’s Fairfax, which in the interval have served hundreds of thousands of customers from all over the world.

Kelbo’s guest book is filled with names from New York, England, Switzerland, Shanghai, Alaska and Honolulu. Lord Denbigh, an English milord, wrote “Jolly place.” A New Jersey patron wrote, “I traveled 3,000 miles to get a good meal.” The late Susan Peters was a regular customer and the only one to receive car service before the Kar-B-Q was built. Other movie stars are regular patrons. Nowadays when a West Los Angeles businessman wants to take a client to lunch, he takes him to Kelbo’s.

All this developed because Jack Bouck, an ex-musician working in a shipyard, knew the secret of barbecued ribs and roasts. Neither he nor his partner Tom Kelley knew beans about running a beanery. Jack and Tom went blindly into a business venture with only a recipe and ran head-on into success.

As a youngster, Jack joined a professional band engaged by the Dollar Steamship line. In restaurants in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Manila and Honolulu Jack was impressed by the quality of the barbecued ribs and roasts. On his free time he visited the kitchens and made friends with the Chinese chefs. There he learned the secret of barbecued ribs, roasts and sauces.

In World War II, after a hitch in the Marines, Jack got a job at the San Pedro shipyards where he met Tom Kelley.

In a shipyard you get sick of sandwiches. While Jack and Tom were griping one day Jack said, “You and your wife come over to the apartment and I’ll cook you the best barbecued dinner you ever ate.”

“To make a long story short,” Tom rentes, “when I finished the barbecued ribs, yams, and pineapple, they had to walk me around the block four times!”

Tom was sold. “Bouck, we’re going into business.”

They pooled their savings—$250 each. They spent their time off searching for a suitable location. The corner at Exposition, Gateway and Pico boulevards in West Los Angeles looked good.

They bought an old Army barrack for $155. Two hours daily, before going to the shipyard, they worked dismantling it, hauling the material to their site. They decided to begin with the refrigerator. They studied books and how-to articles in magazines and squared that away.

The barbecue pit was next on the program. They found that an old brick building at the Veterans Hospital in Sawtelle, two miles away, was being razed. They bought one wall for eight dollars, knocked it down, cleaned the brick, and hauled it away themselves. When the novice bricklayers had finished the pit their nest egg was exhausted. To earn more money they contracted for Sunday work installing safes in markets and other businesses. When they had established another small fund they went on with their building.

“It was a wonder,” Jack said, “that the neighborhood didn’t circulate a pe- tition against us, we were so long finishing the thing.”

Opening night was 18 months after starting the project. For months a sign in front had proclaimed, “Kelbo’s Hawaiian Barbecue Opening Soon—It Says Here.” By that time they were really broke. They had to borrow $50 for cash register change. And having gone into it so far, they hired an Hawaiian string orchestra to play outside.

A huge spotlight shuttled across the sky. Opening hour was to be at eight p.m. Late in the afternoon all was in readiness—gallons of salad, the pit filled with meat and yams.

When Jack returned at seven o’clock he was astonished to see lines of people. Cars were double parked; police directed traffic. When the doors opened the crowds jammed the place. Orders started piling up when they discovered that coffee had not been made. The French Fry cutter broke down and the potatoes had to be cut by hand. They worked so hard and fast that they never did hear the music outside. Periodically they bolted into the refrigerator to cool off. And they just stared at each other, bug-eyed. They had cut fingers, burned hands and arms, and still the crowds came. Some of the customers stood in line from eight o’clock until eleven.- The boys had to close the place at one a. m. because their food ran out.

When the last customer had left, Tom and Jack dropped exhausted onto a bench, “Where did they all come from?” gasped Tom.

Jack explained that one man had been watching the building go up for a year and a half. Others had smelled the ribs barbecuing all day.

It was many months before the boys had more than four or five hours sleep each night. They did their own dishwashing, and after the last patron* left at 1:30 in the morning, preparations were made for the following day—ribs and roasts into the barbecue, salad to make, pineapple to slice, working until five a. m., then back again to open up at eleven for lunch. In the first year of operation they grossed a quarter of a million dollars!

In 15 months they had 13 employees, serving 2,300 customers each week, added the Kar-B-Q, enlarged the pit and built the Fairfax place opposite Gilmore Stadium. And the feverish pace of that opening night has never let up. Once they opened their doors, success hit the boys like a tidal wave. Neither is complaining—not seriously, anyway. For anyone who wants to copy them they have some advice. First, find your magic recipe. Second, learn something about business management. If they’d done that, the boys say, they’d have saved the first two or three fortunes they made in ribs. As the first tip is the toughie, maybe you’d better learn about management first—you can always use this basic knowledge.

Household Engineer Degree

THE modern housewife should learn electrical engineering to enjoy the full benefits of modern household devices like vacuum cleaners and electric refrigerators. Many millions of dollars expended on such devices are now wasted because housewives who use them do not know how to get the most out of them.

Beautiful and makes beautiful toast!

On the gift table they’ll praise
this Proctor for its beauty …
on the dining table
she’ll praise it for its skill…
its outstanding ability to make
toast exactly to suit your taste …

a feat made possible by
its wonder-working
Proctor Color Guard.
The swish of a cloth keeps it
shining bright…
and its sliding crumb tray
works so easily, like a drawer.
Fair trade price, $22.00
Federal excise tax included.

To make your toaster gift breath-taking, Proctor Dealers are offering a beautiful tray set, worth $9.95…together with the $22.00 DeLuxe Proctor Toaster, both only $25.95 . . . with the $15.95 Proctor Toaster, both only $19.95.

PROCTOR AUTOMATIC POP-UP TOASTER

PROCTOR ELECTRIC COMPANY, PHILADELPHIA 40, PENNSYLVANIA

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Household Tasks Simplified With These New Inventions

Now comes the automatic kettle, which boils the water, makes the tea and automatically shuts off the current when tea is ready, thus relieving the housewife of the necessity of tending the pot. The current consumption is comparatively low.

This combination dust pan and broom rack that attaches to the wall proves very practical and handy for housewives. Made of heavy metal, the device will last a lifetime.

An adjustable hinge that prevents excessive pressure on sandwiches is feature of new sandwich toaster and grill’ now being manufactured. The hinged cover may be turned all the way back, permitting both surfaces to be used for bacon; etc.

For homes without bathrooms this fold-up tub is ideal. When out of use the tub is folded into the cabinet along with steps.

There’s no danger from moths if you use this new coat hanger. A rod hanging from the lower crosspiece holds from one to fifty moth balls, thus keeping clothes well protected at all times. The hanger is made of wire, and is light weight.

Left—To keep fingers dry, this novel lemon squeezer prevents messiness by holding rind in pair of metal arms. Right— Here is latest word in kitchen convenience—a stove which holds all kitchen utensils where you can get them without fuss.

New Building Bricks Are Light Enough to Float on Water

A NEW fire brick, one-third the weight of a standard brick of the same size, and light enough to float on water, is expected to revolutionize the brick industry. Robert F. Martin of Philadelphia is the inventor.

Smaller foundations will be possible in brick buildings, since the dead weight of the walls is cut in three. Handling costs will be much less.

Brick buildings should now be even less susceptible to changes in temperature. The many tiny air cells in the new material are almost perfect insulators of heat, making for lower home heating costs in winter.

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LATEST INVENTIONS for Household Convenience

For health and comfort in homes, this novel humidifier which throws moisture into air in form of unheated vapor is now being marketed. Electrically driven cone spouts tiny water particles upward by centrifugal force.

Equipped with long wooden handle, this new holder lifts hot pans from stove by strong alligator-like jaws.

Made of reinforced rubber tile available in thirty colors, these new drainboards eliminate danger of cracked and broken dishes, and cannot be chipped or dented like enamel-covered drainboards. The material is applied to a wood base, resulting in solid, impervious surface, and is not affected by cigarettes, cigars or lighted matches, as colors are permanent throughout entire thickness. Tile is produced under high pressure and heat.

Threaded through two parallel rods, garments hung on this new hanger cannot slide to one side and become rumpled when the device is tilted as illustrated.

The nuisance of banging doors is eliminated once and for all by use of the easily-installed door check shown above. A piston working in a compressed air chamber acts as a buffer, striking a plunger screw in the door jamb. The device may be installed either at top or bottom of the doorway. Right—This labor-saving mechanical vegetable dicer performs the feat of cutting a whole potato at one movement, a mere down stroke of the lever doing the trick. The potato or other vegetable is placed in a holder and forced downward through coarse, mesh-like arrangement of knives.

Of interest to home owners is the new washable cellulose-coated wall paper which resists ink and grease.

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Paper Houses for Olympic Contestants

MORE than 3,000 young men athletes, representing over fifty nations at the Tenth Olympiad, at Los Angeles, in 1932, will be housed in two room structures built of paper composition on wooden frames. A minimum of 800 of these unusual houses is now being erected to form “Olympic Village,” which will be the home of the contestants while they are attending the ancient games.

This is the first time since the Greeks sheltered themselves in tents during the first of the Olympiads, centuries ago, that an effort has been made to bring the housing and feeding of all the contestants at any of the Olympic games into one centralized locality.

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DOORBELL HARP

By R. J. DE CRISTOFORO

THIS doorway harp will produce a merry melody at the front entrance to your home every time someone enters or leaves. One friend remarked that it should serve as an excellent deterrent to salesmen, since its sounds would distract them long enough for you to shut the door!- Be that as it may, the harp never fails to prompt a “Who’s playing the guitar?” from visitors, and is a good ice-breaker when welcoming guests.

Before beginning construction of the harp, make a full-size pattern by enlarging the squares (Fig. 2), and use the pattern to obtain the outline of the body and to locate the various parts during assembly. To cut out the front and back pieces (parts A and B, Fig. 2), first, tape the blanks together, then cut both at the same time on the jigsaw or bandsaw or by hand with a coping saw. Cut out part C, then make the inside cuts on parts B and C by taping them together and cutting at the same time, or by making the cut-out first in part B (Fig. 3) and using as a template to transfer the outline to part C. Sand the inside and outside edges of part C carefully, then glue it in place on part B and clamp.

To get the outlines for the dividers (parts D, E and F, Fig. 2), set them in position on the back piece of the harp and trace the curved outline with a pencil. Cut slightly outside the line and attach to the back (part A) with small nails and glue (Fig. 4).

Make upper and lower bridge (parts H and J, Fig. 2) and attach to front piece (part B). If perforated hardboard was used for part B, insert the screws through convenient holes. Otherwise, drill and countersink for them.

Apply plenty of glue to mating surfaces of front and back assemblies, and clamp until dry. To obtain a smooth contour, use a drum sander on the inside curves and a disc sander on the outside curves.

To make edging (part G), cut a piece of pine 2 in. wide, then resaw to get a piece as close to in- thick as possible. Sand this carefully, then apply a full coat of contact cement to one side. Coat the perimeter of the harp with contact cement also. Allow cement to set for about 20 minutes to a half hour (check with instructions on label of can), then place parts in position carefully and press them together (Fig. 5). Trim off excess and sand smooth. Part G can be made in two pieces if you prefer, butt-join ted at the bottom of the harp, or a suitable veneer can be substituted for the pine.

Finish the harp according to the material used and the effect desired. Colorful flat enamels are good for a gay Pennsylvania Dutch appearance, while stain and varnish are required if you’ve used a fancy veneer and hardwood plywood for the top.

Insert the music strings through the #40 holes drilled for them in parts H and J, pull as tight as possible, then thread through holes drilled with a #50 drill in the #5x-5/8-in. rh screws (Fig. 2 detail and Fig. 6). Turn each screw as much as necessary to keep the wire taut. Make the cover for the string screws (part K) from two pieces, nailed and glued together, or cut it from solid stock. Screw and glue to parts C and H (Fig. 2).

The wooden balls can be turned on the lathe, but 1-in. dia. wooden beads are easily available in a toy store. However, most of these have holes drilled through them which will have to be filled with dowel. Drill #40 holes in beads or dowel filler for the string, then attach the strings to part K with escutcheon pins, spaced 1 in. apart. Space horizontal centerlines of balls about 1-1/2 in. apart.

Finally, attach two small picture frame hangers on the back of the harp and suspend from two upholstery tacks on the back of the door, where it is all set to play a welcoming tune.—End

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Food Fakers Caught by Simple Kitchen Tests

LOW prices for commodities stimulate the business of the food faker, permitting him to sell his adulterated and “doctored” foodstuffs at prices lower than the lowest that can possibly be asked for pure articles.

However clever the faker may be, science can catch him and his spurious concoctions by very simple means; means so simple indeed that every householder may take advantage of them to protect the health and well-being of his family.

No elaborate chemical apparatus is necessary and the tests are simple enough to be handled by the most unskilled person.

It often happens that very cheap tea has been treated with coal-tar dye-stuff to make it more “green”.

An Easy Tea Test

The tea cheater may be very easily caught by the simple expedient of rubbing some of the tea between the folds of a clean cloth. If the tea has been dyed, some of the dye will be found to discolor the cloth used for the rubbing. In conducting this experiment, the tea should be squeezed hard as it is rubbed.

Chicory in cheap coffee is an old trick. While chicory is not a dangerous adulterant, it is spurious and has no place with good coffee.

In general it may be said that a good, pure coffee will float if placed on the surface of cold water held in a glass. If heavily adulterated, most of the adulterated portion will slowly sink.

This test may be made more positive by shaking a small amount of the coffee in a saturated solution of ordinary table salt and water. The coffee is pure if nearly all of it floats and the liquid becomes a pale yellow. A saturated solution is prepared by warming the water and dissolving salt in it until the water refuses to take any more.

Not all adulterants are as harmless as chicory. One of the most dangerous ones might be found in pickles. The food faker knows that pickles and the vinegar solution that preserves them, may be made to take on a beautiful green color by the presence of copper. This is done by boiling the pickles in copper kettles.

Nothing more elaborate than an ordinary iron nail is needed to expose this little trick. A small amount of the vinegar is poured out into a cup and an iron nail is placed in it.

This is set away for a day or so and if the pickles contain a dangerous amount of copper, the nail will be found to have been copper-plated in the meantime. If this happens, there is no fit place for the pickles but the garbage can.

Test Your Butter

A candle and a spoon is all that is needed in the way of equipment for a good butter test. Cheap butter, and sometimes butter that is high priced, is filled with cotton seed grease which, while not harmful, should not be found in butter sold by that name.

A small amount of the butter is placed in a spoon and the spoon is held over a candle flame until the butter boils. If absolutely pure it will boil very quietly. On the other hand, if it contains foreign greasy matter, it will behave very badly and sputter loudly.

Some housewives are tricked into buying jams and jellies because of their pretty colors. This is a dangerous attraction, for it may mean that the articles have been treated with dyes. The alert housewife may use the following simple experiment to determine whether or not she is being victimized in this way.

A small amount of the jelly is placed in water and boiled. Into this solution, a small piece of white cloth is placed. After the cloth has been permitted to boil, it should be dried and washed. If the jelly has been dyed it will be found that all of the color cannot be washed out of the cloth.

When bakers use inferior flour they cover it up by using plenty of alum to rob the flour of its deserving dark color.

Such tricky business may be detected by soaking a piece of the bread made from such flour in ammonia carbonate which may be purchased at the corner drug store.

Detecting Watered Milk

The watered milk game is an easy one to catch although two simple chemicals will be needed in the experiment. About a quarter ounce of milk is poured into a container. One drop of formalin is added to this and the mixture is then agitated. After this add a drop of sulphuric acid. If the milk turns blue as result of this treatment, it has been watered.

A solution of pure sugar should be absolutely transparent and should not present a foggy appearance. This is the basis of the sugar test.

A small amount of sugar, say three tablespoonfuls, is dissolved in a glass of water. A newspaper is then held up behind the glass so that the observer will have something by which to judge.

Pure ice cream should contain no gelatine or cornstarch. Indeed it is a sad commentary on our business ethics here in America when it is admitted that it is not always possible to buy ice cream without one or both of these adulterants being present.

Those who insist on buying the pure article and who wish to check the honesty of the maker will find the following test a simple and effective one. If a solution of the ice cream is made and a small amount of iodine added, a blue color results after shaking. This indicates the presence of starch.

For gelatine a more complicated test is needed. About two teaspoonfuls of ice cream is dissolved in twice as much water. To this is added two teaspoonfuls of mercuric nitrate. The resulting solution is filtered and added to a solution of picric acid of equal volume. A yellow precipitate discloses the presence of gelatine without any possible doubt.

Benzoic acid or sodium benzoate are two very bad preservatives and any effort spent in disclosing them would be very much worth while. Any food like catsup suspected of containing them should be given the following treatment: First, it should be slightly acidified by adding a little acid of any kind. After this, the resulting mixture is shaken with ether. If left to stand, the ether will come to the surface and evaporate. This should be permitted and the result dissolved in hot water. Then a little ammonia is added, and the excess driven off by heating. This done, a few drops of a one per cent ferric chloride solution is added. A brown precipitate indicates the presence of either benzoic acid or sodium benzoate. A violet color indicates the presence of salicylic acid.

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STRUCTURE & DESIGN

Compassionate hospital design for Philadelphia
Ruthless removal of trees in Europe
The Economist’s new mews in London
How to figure inflation in construction
Skyscrapers assume new forms

Editor Walter McQuade, A.I.A.
Research Associates Mary Jane Lightbown Jeanne Krause

A Hospital Designed to Comfort the Patients

The starchy, sanitary quality of the architecture of most hospitals often makes them oppressive to the sick. A warm and welcome corrective to this tendency will soon rise in Philadelphia, where a $4,200,000 hospital for the care of cancer patients has been designed deliberately to create a humane and appealing atmosphere. In its external appearance, the American Oncologic Hospital (shown in model form, right) will achieve that result with a roof as gracefully draped as a bride’s skirt and with the various floors stepped back to give each bedroom its own door to an outside terrace.

The interiors will demonstrate an even more conscious effort to attain therapeutic reassurance through design. The rooms for patients will be grouped into pleasant little neighborhoods. Each one will have no more than six rooms and its own lounge. This arrangement will permit the patient just the amount of privacy that he wants to have. Bedrooms will have carpeted floors, louvered wooden shutters on doors and windows, and built-in cabinets and desks. The hospital expects to have a busy outpatient department —about 30,000 annual visits are anticipated—-and the facilities of that department are discreetly designed to divide groups of waiting patients according to their condition.

In the U.S. last year, total hospital and institutional construction cost close to $2 billion, of which nearly three-quarters was private construction. Most of it was spent in urban areas, often to enlarge already existing institutions and to group specialized services. The Oncologic Hospital will share a site in the Fox Chase section of Philadelphia with two other organizations largely devoted to combating cancer: Jeanes Hospital and the Institute for Cancer Research.

Architect for the Oncologic is Vincent G. Kling, forty-eight, a Philadelphian who recently has been moving from a sharp industrial style toward shapelier designs. Kling appears the prototype of the slim, wavy-haired, pipe-smoking, casual kind of architect favored by fiction writers; inside the tweedy sheath, however, he is all cool efficiency. In 1946 he left a designer’s job at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill to set up his own office in Philadelphia. Several of his buildings have won prizes for their sleek functionalism.

Kling’s new style, emerging in the Oncologic Hospital, is also seen in the Philip T. Sharpies Dining Hall at Swarthmore (below). The building sits between an area of residential-scale fraternity lodges and the two big gray Victorian buildings that house most of the college classrooms. In its own way, the new dining hall is a match for the Victorian mammoths, not only in material but in its looming shape.

Road Gangs Revise Europe’s Travel Posters

The streets of the Great Society, President Johnson has declared, ought to be shaded and lined with trees. Such words from such a source have proved meat and drink to U.S. conservationists, who have been encouraged in fights to save the red- woods of California and the sycamores around Boston. Ironically, however, the conservationists of Europe, whose environment is so often idealized in American minds, have been losing ground—and trees. ? Punishing the Italian poplars. The Italian national agency for highways, Azienda Nazionale Autonoma Delle Strade, mailed a circular to all its department heads last year advising them to use the ax if trees impeded visibility on curves. Large and lovely trees soon began to topple, particularly in Tuscany and in the north country around Milan and Turin. On one highway through a hunting preserve near Como, ANAS crews took so savage a toll that complaints poured in from conservationists, who said that “No Passing” signs would have sufficed. But ANAS spokesmen shrugged and replied that Italian drivers would never slow down in open country; ANAS had to “save Italian drivers from themselves.”

Meanwhile, trees were also being cut down in urban areas. The avenues of Rome were not exempt. Responding to public protests, the Italian Minister of Public Works has appointed a commission to recommend a policy wiser than the blind slaughter of trees. But considerable numbers of poplars are already lost. Pruning in Spain. Spanish officialdom is even less accommodating than Italian. When a horrified Barcelona architect wrote indignantly in Serra d’Or, a Benedictine magazine, about the despoiling of plane trees along the roadsides of Catalonia, he was hauled into court by the highway builders. Charged with “insults to state bureaucracy,” he was finally declared not guilty, but numerous trees were left pathetically truncated.

The Gentlemanly New Brutalists

When London’s Economist announced in 1961 that architects Peter and Alison Smithson had been selected to design its new headquarters group on St. James’s Street in London, the choice seemed an odd one. The young Smithsons, husband and wife, were the belligerent protagonists of the New Brutalism—a movement specializing in burly, raw modern buildings deliberately refuting English architectural gentility. St. James’s Street hardly seemed the place for brutality; it is lined with old buildings that shelter such elegant shops as Lock the hatter, and Lobb, bootmaker to the Duke of Edinburgh, as well as gentlemen’s clubs like the Devonshire, Brooks’s, White’s, the Carlton, and Boodle’s.

But the early alarm soon died down. The Smithsons have labored successfully to produce a charming mews. On a paved courtyard opened to St. James’s Street they arranged three buildings: a bank with shops to front directly on St. James’s; behind it the sixteen-story Economist tower; and a block of apartments; all are bold in materials but discreet in shape. Staid old Boodle’s, instead of being injured, picked up an additional bay window facing into the courtyard.

This rare coincidence of structural conviction and strength in context is not the general rule in London. The city has been cheapened in recent years with so much monstrous speculative office building that the Labor party, when it came to power, abruptly brought new office building to a halt. In the calm that has ensued, the Economist Building has stood as a model. Sir Geoffrey Crowther, chairman of the Economist, concedes that a monolith of larger size on the site would have been more profitable, but views the $6-million investment as “financially successful.” Speaking of his architects, the chairman adds: “Our only hope of immortality is as a footnote to them. Who, after all, were Sir Christopher Wren’s clients? . . . We met the Smithsons six years ago with trepidation and take leave of them now with affection and awe.”

How to Budget for Inflation in Construction

How to figure out what inflation will do to estimates of costs for heavy construction jobs long has baffled both clients and contractors. The vague, provisory phrase adding “10 percent for contingencies,” which has been the standard means relied on to cover inflation (as well as other eventualities), has become a sketchy and often inadequate protection for both parties. There are ways of doing better.

Five years ago San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit District was charged with designing and estimating the costs of a new mass-transit system. The district knew that construction of the system would be a slow process. First, a bond issue had to be carried by popular vote. After approval of the issue, the money became available for the project only as bond issues were sold. And, as a practical matter, not all the streets along the route could be torn up at the same time, and not all local contracting companies could be employed simultaneously in the city’s work. Looking at all that, the district engineers estimated that the job would not be finished until 1971.

The district’s solution to the inflationary pressures that were bound to appear over a ten-year period was spectacularly sound. Its engineers, Parsons Brinckerhoff-Tudor-Bechtel, plotted the course of local inflation, from 1945 on, in various categories of heavy construction from excavation to aerial construction (necessary because 41 percent of the system will be elevated). Correlating the past with the estimates of the future, the district concluded that inflation might eat up around 30 percent of the budgeted amounts before the work could be completed. Facing the matter courageously, it frankly added 20 percent for inflation to the standard 10 percent contingency. The 30 percent represented $190 million of the total $792-million bond issue, which the voters approved in 1962.

Now the wisdom of that procedure has become eminently clear. Five years after the initial estimates were made, the job is at midpoint in time, and inflation has been doing just about what it was expected to do. It has been adding to building costs at about 3 percent per year, only slightly ahead of its anticipated rate.

Office Buildings Sprout in New Hybrids

Early in this century skyscrapers were towers that grew narrower as they grew taller, often ending in delicate spires. Then the R.C.A. Building in Rockefeller Center demonstrated the grace and utility possible in an upright slab. Since that time most skyscrapers not forced into awkward shapes by building codes have been modified slabs, whose shapes followed the general proportions of king-sized cigarette packs.

But anyone taking a searching look at the urban skyline in the U.S. knows that clients’ ambition for individuality and designers’ will to invent are now changing the traditional silhouettes. The biggest postwar office building, Pan Am in Manhattan (designed by Emery Roth & Sons, with Walter Gropius and Pietro Belluschi as design consultants), is an immense eight-sided affair. Fattened too much, it does not compare favorably with the slender, graceful Pirelli Building—also a polygon—built earlier in Milan by Gio Ponti and Pier Luigi Nervi. (But Pirelli has such small floor areas that it would be a financial fiasco on the costly Pan Am site.) The Phoenix Mutual Life Insurance Building (architect, Harrison & Abramovitz) went beyond the shape of the Pirelli Building by putting new stress on sharply ended curves.

The National Geographic Society headquarters in Washington, D.C. (Edward Durell Stone, architect), is a conventional shape, but an old device, the overhanging cornice, succeeds in giving it a new look.

Kaiser Industries chose a long crescent for its Oakland headquarters (Welton Becket, architect). Minora Yamasaki’s recent Northwestern National Life Insurance Building in Minneapolis is a skyscraper on its side, using a columned porch, which has ancient echoes, to achieve its modern air. The new city hall (architects: the late Viljo Revell and John B. Parkin Associates) in Toronto places two tall curves of office space around a low council chamber.

Many more shapes are coming off drawing boards (below). They range from Yamasaki’s double spires for Manhattan to the low concrete Boston City Hall, which is complemented by a crescent-shaped, low office building nearby. end

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The City – Design for Living

by Lewis Mumford

The city as a purely physical fact has been subject to numerous investigations. But what is the city as a social institution? The earlier answers to these questions, in Aristotle, Plato and the Utopian writers from Sir Thomas More to Robert Owen have been on the whole more satisfactory than those of the more systematic sociologists. Most contemporary treatises on “urban sociology” in America throw no important light upon the problem.

One of the soundest definitions of the city was that framed by John Stow, an honest observer of Elizabethan London, who said: “Men are congregated into cities and commonwealths for honesty and utility’s sake; these shortly be the commodities that do come by cities, commonalties and corporations. First, men by this nearness of conversation are withdrawn from barbarous feritie and force to certain mildness of manners and to humanity and justice whereby they are contented to give and take right, to and from their equals and inferiors, and to hear and obey their heads and superiors. Also the doctrine of God is more fitly delivered, and the discipline thereof more aptly to be executed in peopled towns than abroad by reason of the facility of common and often assembling, and consequently such inhabitants be better managed in order and better instructed in wisdom. Good behavior is yet called urbanitas because it is rather found in cities than elsewhere. In sum, by often hearing, men be better persuaded in religion, and for that they live in the eyes of others they be by example the more easily trained to justice and by shame-fastness restrained from injury.

“And whereas commonwealths and kingdoms cannot have, next after God, any surer foundation than the love and goodwill of one man towards another, that also is closely bred and maintained in cities, where men by mutual society and companying together do grow to alliances, commonalties and corporations:’ It is with no hope of adding much to the essential insight of this description of the urban process that I would sum up the sociological concept of the city in the following terms: The city is a related collection of primary groups and purposive associations: the first, like family and neighborhood, are common to all communities while the second are especially characteristic of city life. These varied groups support themselves through economic organizations that are likewise of a more or less corporate, or at least publicly regulated, character; and they are all housed in permanent structures within a relatively limited area. The essential physical means of a city’s existence are the fixed site, the durable shelter, the permanent facilities for assembly, interchange and storage; the essential social means are the social division of labor which serves not merely the economic life but the cultural processes.

The city in its complete sense then is a geographic plexus, an economic organization, an institutional process, a theater of social action and an esthetic symbol of collective unity. On one hand it is a physical frame for the commonplace domestic and economic activities; on the other it is a consciously dramatic setting for the more significant actions and the more sublimated urges of a human culture. The city fosters art and is art; the city creates the theater and is the theater. It is in the city, the city as theater, that man’s more purposive activities are formulated and worked out through conflicting and cooperating personalities, events and groups into more significant culminations.

Without the social drama that comes into existence through the focusing and intensification of group activity there is not a single function performed in the city that could not be performed— and has not in fact been performed—in the open country. The physical organization of the city may deflate this drama or make it frustrate, or it may through the deliberate efforts of art, politics and education make the drama more richly significant, as a well-designed stage-set intensifies and underlines the gestures of the actors and the action of the play.

It is not for nothing that men have dwelt so often on the beauty or the ugliness of cities. These attributes condition men’s social activities. And if there is a deep reluctance on the part of the true city dweller to leave his cramped quarters for the physically more benign environment of a suburb—even a model garden suburb!—his instincts are partly justified: in its various and many-sided life, in its very opportunities for social disharmony and conflict the city creates drama; the suburb lacks it.

One may describe the city in its social aspect as a special framework directed toward the creation of differentiated opportunities for a common life and a significant collective drama. As indirect forms of association, with the aid of signs and symbols and specialized organizations, supplement direct face-to-face intercourse, the personalities of the citizens themselves become many faceted: they reflect their specialized interests, their more intensely trained aptitudes; their finer discriminations and selections. The personality no longer presents a more or less unbroken traditional face to reality as a whole.

Here lies the possibility of personal disintegration, and here lies the need for re-integration through wider participation in a concrete and visible collective whole. What men cannot imagine as a vague formless society they can live through and experience as citizens in a city. Their unified plans and buildings become a symbol of their social relatedness, and when the physical environment itself becomes disordered and incoherent the social functions that it harbors become more difficult to express.

Before man can become fully humanized the social man must break up into a thousand parts, so that each grain of aptitude, each streak of intelligence, each fiber of special interest may take a deeper color by mingling with other grains, streaks and fibers of the same nature. The undifferentiated common bond of primary association is weakened by these specialized associations, but the cable of civilization itself becomes stronger through such multiform twisting into a more complex and many-colored strand.

From simple consciousness of kind in the tribe or family to the developed consciousness of kind that goes with special associations and differentiated groups, from habit to choice, from a fixed mold to a dynamic equilibrium of forces, from taking life as it comes to comprehending it and redesigning it—that is the path of both human and civic development. This transfer of emphasis from the uniformities and common acceptances of the primary group to the critical choices, the purposive associations and the rational ends of the secondary group is one of the main functions of the city. The city is in fact the physical form of the highest and most complex types of associative life.

One further conclusion follows from this concept of the city: social facts are primary, and the physical organization of a city, its industries and its markets, its lines of communication and traffic must be subservient to its social needs. Whereas in the development of the city during the last century we expanded the physical plant recklessly and treated the essential social nucleus, the organs of government and education and social service, as mere afterthoughts, today we must treat the social nucleus as the essential element in every valid city plan. The spotting and inter-relationship of schools, libraries, theaters, community centers is the first task in defining the urban neighborhood and laying down the outlines of an integrated city.

If this is the correct interpretation of the nature of the city a good part of the work that has been done under the name of city planning must be discounted and discredited. It has no more to do with the essential functions of living in cities than the work of the scene shifter and property man have to do with the development of Hamlet. This is not to deny its use, for scene shifters have their use, but it is to cast a doubt upon its sufficiency. The planning of cities by those who have hitherto called themselves city planners is like having the play itself written by the property man or mistaking the stage directions for the lines of the actors.

Though our conception of the physical structure of cities during the last century has been inadequate even in purely physical terms, like the movement of people and the service of industries, people have been even more wantonly inept in their conception of the social structure and the social activities of cities. With their eyes on the purely material changes that are so necessary, even those who have striven most earnestly for improvement have been content to build mere buildings. But buildings do not make a city, and the adequate planning of buildings is only a part of the necessary social schema.

From the standpoint of city design the sociological theory of groups has a direct bearing upon plan. One of the difficulties in the way of political association is that we have not provided it with the necessary buildings, the necessary halls, rooms, meeting places.

Hence in big cities the saloon and the shabby district headquarters, open only to the more sedulous party members, have served. As for industries, the political opportunities for association have been even scantier. In how many factory districts are there well-equipped halls of sufficient size in which the workers can meet?

The town meeting of the New England political system had reality because it had dimensions and members. The citizens met face to face in a special building, the town hall. They saw and heard their fellow citizens and they discussed problems relating to a unit immediately within their grasp and vision.

But the peoples of the Western World have sought to live under an abstract and disembodied political democracy without giving its local units any other official organ than the polling booth. We have hitherto lacked the energy or the insight to provide the necessary meeting halls, committee rooms, permanent offices. We have still to organize neighborhoods and corporate organizations as if the political functions of the community were important ones.

In the conglomerate masses we have called cities it is no wonder that political life as a concrete exercise of duties and functions has given way to various subtle parasitisms and diversions. And contrariwise, in new communities that have been planned as social units, with visible coherence in the architecture, with a sufficient number of local meeting rooms for group activities, as in Sunnyside Gardens, Long Island, a robust political life with effective collective action and a sense of renewed public responsibility has swiftly grown up.

The moral should be plain: we must design whole social units. We must design cities, and in the order of design the arrangement of the essential social institutes, their adequate provision and servicing, is a key to the rest of the structure. It is on the purely instrumental physical services that we must practice the most stringent economy, even parsimony; it is on the political and educational services that we must spend with a lavish hand.

This means a new order of design and a different type of designer. It means that the emphasis will shift progressively from the stage-set to the drama and that the handling of the social activities and relationships will engage the fuller attention of the planner. In time this will have the effect of reducing the instrumental arts of town planning to fairly stable routine, while a greater amount of energy and economic support will be set free for the expressive arts. Painting and sculpture, drama and music will again have greater importance than sanitation and sewage and antisepsis.

The elemental unit of planning then is no longer the house or the houseblock. It is the city, because it is only in terms of this more complex social formation that any particular type of activity or building has significance. And the aim of such planning is not the efficiency of industry by itself or the diminution of disease by itself or the spreading of culture by itself: the aim is the adequate dramatization of communal life, the widening of the domain of human significance so that ultimately no act, no routine, no gesture will be devoid of human value or will fail to contribute to the reciprocal support of citizen and community.

When this drama is sharply focused and adequately staged every part of life feels an uprush of social energy. Eating, working, mating, sleeping are not less than they were before but far more. Life has despite its broken moments the poise and unity of a collective work of art. To create that background, to achieve that insight, to enliven each individual capacity through articulation in an intelligible and esthetically stimulating whole is the essence of the art of building cities. Less than that is not enough!

One more point about the social nature of cities. Reformers and renovators, whose work usually is prompted by some raucous failure in the social machinery, are tempted to oversimplify in the opposite direction. They seek a harmony too absolute, an order whose translation into actual life would stultify the very purpose it seeks to achieve. The student of utopias knows the weakness that lies in perfectionism, for that weakness has now been made manifest in the new totalitarian states where the dreams of a Plato, a Cabet, a Bellamy have at many removes taken shape. What is lacking in such dreams is not a sense of the practical. What is lacking is a realization of the essential human need for disharmony and conflict, elements whose acceptance and resolution are indispensable to psychological growth.

Communities that are so small that the essential differences between people and groups must be prudently glazed over, or so large that they cannot intermingle and clash without violent disorder, fail to provide the best environment for the development of human character.

But good-fellowship is not the whole duty of social man, and some of the highest products of the spirit have been achieved not out of small contentments but out of great frustration, antagonism, disappointment, bitterness. Koheleth and Isaiah, Euripides and Shakespeare, Dante and Machiavelli offer testimony to the higher disharmonies possible in Jerusalem and Athens and Florence and London. Psychological growth is more important than somatic satisfaction, and in designing cities we must provide an environment broad enough and rich enough never to degenerate into a “model community!”

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Ten Inventions that Make Housekeeping Easy

One of the leading electrical refrigerator companies has recently developed a rubber ice cube tray in which the water is self leveling. Heretofore the trays used for this purpose have had to be leveled separately.

An electric tie presser for home use is designed to operate from any light socket. The metal form is inserted into the tie, as shown above, and then the device is closed for a few minutes.

This iron stand makes your electric iron cordless. The adapter can be adjusted to any iron and the terminals may be raised or lowered. The device eliminates any dangling cords as shown.

This attractive, modernistic extractor gives you the pure juice without pulp or seeds.

A reversible open jaw curtain bracket for spring rollers which does away with cotter pins.

Here is a spray gun, operated by a vacuum cleaner, for spreading moth preventive on furniture and clothing. The liquid is good for five years unless articles are washed in soap and water.

The toaster shown above produces no crumbs and cannot be tipped over. It will toast bread of any thickness on both sides in thirty to forty seconds.

This ingenious machine mixes color into oleomargarine, beats eggs and fudge and mashes potatoes, besides having a dozen other uses.

A very useful chair for keeping the trousers pressed. It is heated electrically from a light socket.

This handy bathroom rack is made of metal and can be adjusted to fit into any medicine cabinet.

ROBOT mower cuts grass within signal-wire perimeter around lawn. It automatically turns around when it hits wire. Quiet, virtually maintenance-free, battery-powered unit random cuts up to 7,000 sq. ft. on one charge; $795.

MowBot. Inc., North Tonawanda. N. Y. 14120